I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate

by Gay Courter

  What are social workers for if not professionally to represent the best interests of the child? The caseworkers do much of the direct contact work with the family and try to offer services to the injured child, but even in the finest department, heavy caseloads and cumbersome regulations created to manage standards and conduct make it difficult to spend the amount of time necessary to thoroughly handle each case. Also, these employees of large agencies have to weigh an individual’s needs against management policy and budgeted resources. If there are six children vying for a single psychiatric bed or other prime placement, five will lose out, and only one will have his needs met. Who decides which child gets chosen?

  Just as every child ideally has a parent who goes to bat for her own offspring, every child in the throes of a court dispute deserves an independent advocate who does not care about rules or policy or budgets or beds for the population in general, but only how she might best serve the child assigned to her. If your own child desperately needed a rare medication, you would not concern yourself with those who would be denied it so yours might recover. Likewise, a Guardian ad Litem will try to insure that her guardian child is first on the list for whatever he needs.

  One by one, advocate by advocate, this program stretches across the United States, making a difference daily in the lives of thousands of children. Most of the guardians are volunteers. Most are not lawyers. And yet they have official clout to change a child’s life. The fact that the child advocate model was conceived, exists, and thrives in a legal system so hidebound by procedures and traditions is remarkable.

  Court appointed advocates for children, such as Guardians ad Litem, are relatively new in American justice. The idea is an innovative and controversial way to keep children from falling through the cracks. Even though there are now programs in every state, only about twenty-five percent of children in the court process are assigned guardians because there are not enough to go around. Some are paid, professional guardians, while others are attorneys who either receive fees or donate their time. More and more they are volunteers. They range in age from eighteen to eighty and many are professionals who take time out from their busy schedules to work with these children. In our area we have a dynamic group of retired guardians. About twenty percent are men.

  How it works, why it works, and my involvement in the system is what this book is about. I am one volunteer and I speak from my personal experience. Until I had my first case, I had only been in a courtroom once and had never even observed a trial. My expectations when I started were far different from what they are now. My idealism remains but is filtered by my experiences, and so the choices and decisions I make today are not necessarily done in the order, manner, or style that I might have employed several years ago. More than ever, though, I understand that when I accept a case, I have nothing to lose. It cannot directly affect my career, my finances, or my family. I have nothing to gain either, at least nothing that can be quantified, although I know that I receive far more from each child than I expend.

  My mission is pure: to make something that has gone terribly wrong a little better, phone call by phone call, visit by visit, meeting by meeting, court appearance by court appearance, report by report. I don’t have to worry about my personal needs or those of the other adults: parents, agency workers, attorneys. Whenever there is a question or problem or decision, I weigh the alternatives and ask: what is in this child’s best interests? The answer is not always simple, but it is made easier if the fog of confusion, paperwork, and hysteria surrounding the case is blown away and the child alone is the focus.

  Confidentiality is the main covenant of trust between a guardian and her children. To enable the advocate to assess the factors in a child’s life, almost unparalleled access is given to obtain records, including files from social services and economic services; child support enforcement; aging, adult, and Medicaid services; child-caring and public health facilities; medical and other health professionals from doctors to nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors; educational institutions; law enforcement agencies and the Department of Corrections. Without further consent of the child or parents or authorities, the court order authorizes the guardian to inspect and copy any records relating to the child (including those pertaining to the parents, relatives, siblings, suspected perpetrators and their household members or any other adults involved with the child) with the proviso that the information received will not be disclosed except in reports to the court and other parties to the cause. Thus, as a Guardian ad Litem, I have been able to access records that are legally unavailable to police, lawyers, social service agencies, schools, and the families themselves. Information helps an advocate develop a picture of what is going on that is far more inclusive than the viewpoints of many others involved in a case.

  For instance, I learned about a murder that a father committed, which had not been previously known to anyone else involved with the case; I discovered arrest records (but not convictions) for rape; medical reports on previous victims and stepchildren assaulted by a father accused of incest; psychological records on a sex offender showing a pattern to his crimes; and a wide variety of privileged papers that have greatly influenced my recommendations to the court. This aspect of a guardian’s power is often the most shocking to people who have been led to believe that certain documents—such as psychiatric reports—are utterly confidential and can never be used against them. When it comes to the protection of a child, though, there are exceptions. I have had difficulty obtaining some files, but a doctor could be in contempt of court for not revealing them to me. A physician would not have to give me his notes, but he would be required to release the results of testing, historical information, his diagnosis, and opinions. I cannot show these to anyone except the judge, and they become a part of the permanent judicial record. Also they cannot be used to indict or convict the alleged perpetrator. But I can—and have—said to the court in a hearing to decide where a child should be placed, “According to the psychological records that I have reviewed, this man should not have custody of this child.” This is an influential statement, one not made lightly, and one that holds much weight with the court, but it is an example of how a child can be protected without having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the child should not live somewhere that could be dangerous.

  Yes, this power does create enemies. Emotions surrounding custody and family issues are sometimes explosive. In order to protect themselves, guardians are urged to preserve privacy by not revealing their home addresses, phone numbers, or involving their guardian families in their personal lives.

  Privileged information is both a blessing and a curse. When it is used to protect the fragile rights of individuals and the anonymity of innocent victims, it is well employed. But often confidentiality is used as a veil to protect those who failed to serve a child in a proper or timely manner. New administrators of the state social service department are beginning to question the confidentiality of their cases because sealed files shield incompetent workers from inspection and accountability.

  Still, I have sworn an oath to guard the secrets of my cases. Great care has been taken to camouflage the identities of the children in this book. Their names and ages and locations and almost every identifying fact about their families and backgrounds has been altered. Professions and histories of their relatives are as different as they can be while still reflecting the emotional truths of the stories. Despite these adjustments, I have tried to portray honestly and factually my involvement in the Guardian ad Litem program from the training phases through the various court hearings and decisions. The legal groundwork and placement situations have not been changed nor have the specific crimes against the children. Every professional person and foster family has been made into a fictional character, again with distinctive changes. Because there were often several social workers managing a case over time, different judges on the bench, various lawyers representing the parties (and because portraying all of these people w
ould probably confuse the reader), some of these characters actually are composites. Of course I cannot recall every word of a conversation that may have happened many years ago. I never taped interviews (except in one case mentioned in the book), nor did I attempt to take verbatim notes. I did keep extensive field notes and jotted down phrases from pertinent telephone conversations, which were then typed into my journals and handed in monthly to my supervisor. Nevertheless, I sometimes quote actual dialogue to the best of my recollection. If the words are not precise, the meaning and the results are as accurate as possible. Other times I use the device of dialogue to tell the story more as it was lived, recreating only those scenes in which I participated. Some of the events are rather preposterous with strange coincidences, bizarre decisions and outcomes—the whole “truth is stranger than fiction” phenomenon. Many of the cases have convolutions, surprises, and legal maneuvers that cannot be eliminated if the impact on a child’s life is to be understood. Though I have been tempted to modify the truth so it will seem more “real,” I have adhered to the actual flow of events as much as possible, changing only a few situations, usually by leaving out extraneous incidents and characters, to make them comprehensible. But the girl’s love of Robert Frost, the search for a missing mother, the child’s marriage, and the swift appearance of adoptive parents are stunningly true.

  As part of the record keeping required of a guardian, I kept daily time logs of every phone call (even those unanswered), every meeting, and every hour volunteered. Most guardians in our district volunteer ten to twenty hours per month on an average of two active cases. One full-time volunteer carries nine cases and donates two hundred hours per month. I typically spend twenty to forty hours each month, which I juggle between my writing, film work, and family life. My written logs have been invaluable in recreating events. Looking back after many months on a case, I have a very different perception than I did as the situation unfolded. As much as possible, I have attempted to tell the stories in chronological order forward in each case so a reader can follow my path as I waded through reams of perplexing material, made complex decisions, and lived through the consequences of my actions. The locations cover a wide geographical area in Florida, but no county or city is correctly identified, and the circuit court districts and other pertinent places have not been specified. Any town mentioned is definitely not the one involved. Much of the procedure for Guardians ad Litem is specific to Florida and does not apply in other parts of the country, where the roles and rules governing the conduct, responsibility, and power of advocates vary considerably.

  Child rights cases have exploded in the media in the past few years, and several of these celebrated cases have impacted on me directly as well as the work of advocates everywhere. For a while I wrestled with whether or not to respect the confidentiality of these children and have decided that—for better or worse—they have become public record. Since those charged with protecting their confidentiality have chosen to break that silence, I do not feel obligated to protect it either. Only those families whose names and stories have been splashed across headlines and whose legal battles have made case law or serve as historical landmarks (such as Gregory K., Baby Jessica, and Kimberly Mays) are identified correctly. Also, the names of the members of my immediate family and associates have not been altered, since it would be illogical to do so.

  Despite these restrictions, my guardian children are real, their chronicles are true. They need not only to be told, but also to be heard. Since I am a writer, I have decided that I must continue to speak for them through the medium I know best. “I want people to know what happened to me” was one girl’s response when I asked if she wanted me to tell her story. Another said, “Maybe my story will make someone else’s life better.” I asked those children whom I could still locate to select their own pseudonyms for this book, and these are the names I have used. In some cases the real adults have also picked their aliases as a way of actively participating in the process of revealing the complex world of troubled families. These very private lives become the backdrop for a courtroom struggle to fortify children from violence and neglect as well as to provide them with what they are entitled to have under our Constitution: a permanent, safe place where they can not only survive, but thrive.

  1

  The Girl Who Loved Robert Frost

  Lydia’s Story

  When will justice come? When those who are not injured become as indignant as those who are.

  —LEO TOLSTOY

  I HAVE A FILE HERE WITH YOUR NAME ON IT,” said Lillian Elliott, the district Guardian ad Litem case coordinator, in response to my call. “ Saw this young woman in court and knew she needed a special friend. I’ve been holding it open just for you,” she added warmly.

  Whether or not this was true, I wasn’t sure, but Lillian did have a way of selling a case. “Tell me more about her,” I prompted. “Where is she living?”

  “Very near you,” she said to interest me further.

  “Is she in a safe place?” I wondered, because sometimes a child remained in a potentially dangerous home if there had not been enough evidence to remove her.

  “Yes, very, and she’s not going anywhere for a while.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She’s been ordered there by the court. You see, this case is a bit different from the usual: the child is also the perpetrator.” Lillian paused for me to absorb her meaning.

  The children assigned to volunteers were almost always the victims, not the accused. “Why does the girl need a guardian?”

  “The court has determined she’s a CINS kid herself, a child in need of services”—Lillian hesitated for a moment—”because she put her baby sister in a microwave oven.”

  “Is that the horrendous case that was in the newspaper?”

  “Yes, but why don’t you read the file and then decide?” Lillian suggested. “In fact, maybe before you agree to take her on, you should meet her. If you don’t feel comfortable with her, I’ll find someone else.”

  “I told you I’d take anything you thought I could handle.”

  Already during my first year as a volunteer Guardian ad Litem, I had been through a complicated case and a criminal trial, so I was fairly confident that I could manage most situations, but I had been putting off accepting responsibility for a new child because I was completing a book. Finally, though, my desk was clear. I had delivered my latest novel and had many weeks to wait before I received the revisions from my editor. Our two sons were back in school. The bills were paid, the accounting files organized, so I had picked up the phone and called Lillian.

  There is no traditional way a Guardian ad Litem receives a new case. There are always more children needing guardians than there are volunteers, and when an urgent one comes along, the coordinators will initially attempt to match a particular guardian with a child. When necessary, though, they parcel out a file to whoever will agree to accept it. Or, if a volunteer has time for a new case, there is almost always one ready and waiting.

  “Let me send you the file,” Lillian said. “We’ll talk again after you’ve read it.”

  When I became a guardian in October 1989, our circuit court district—one of twenty in Florida—consisted of a central Guardian ad Litem program office with a small, dynamic professional staff that included Nancy Hastedt, the circuit director; Lillian Elliott, the administrative assistant who coordinated the volunteers; and Helen Bonito, the office manager. An attorney worked on a contract basis to advise the approximately forty volunteers responsible for a five-county district covering 4,231 square miles with a population of 573,144. Only 8.9 percent of the district’s population is classified as people of color. With an average of 135 people per square mile, this is a sparsely settled area with one major urban center, a few medium-size towns, and much land given over to citrus groves, vegetable farming, cattle and goat ranching, horse raising, forests, recreational centers along rivers and seacoast, planned housing developments, and retirement communitie
s. People over sixty-five make up 26.5 percent of the population, the largest group, while 17.3 percent are children under fifteen and 10.1 percent range from age fifteen to twenty-four.

  Although guardians are supposed to be appointed for every child in the dependency court system, only 16 percent of the cases were covered at that time. When I finished training, I was the eleventh guardian in my county. In the beginning most of the people I met in the community had never heard of the program, and the initial part of every conversation was relegated to explaining what a Guardian ad Litem was. Four years later, as of September 1994, the paid staff had increased by three full-time case coordinator positions and we had opened two additional satellite offices. A half-time attorney was available to consult with 196 Guardians ad Litem, who were covering 409 active cases, which represented 57 percent of the children in the court system. Now most of the people I meet have at least heard about our work.

  There has also been parallel growth in child advocacy throughout the United States. In 1977 Judge David Soukup of King County, Washington, was kept up at night by the Solomon-like decisions he had to hand down in family court without really knowing what was best for the child in question. Frustrated, he asked his bailiff to round up some volunteers who might help gather information for him about the status of these abused and neglected children. When fifty people showed up for his first informal brown bag lunch to discuss the issue, he knew he was on to a workable idea. Sixteen years later, this one judge’s concept has spread nationwide and now there are approximately 37,000 people in all fifty states, including the District of Columbia, representing more than 116,000 children in court, in this the fastest-growing movement for their protection. Florida, where I live, has a model statewide program and representation available to children in every circuit court district.